What is the Rohingya crisis?

Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic group that make up a large minority of the population of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

They have been consistently and systematically persecuted over the years of a military dictatorship in the former British colony from 1962-2015, when democratic activist and longtime political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi became the defacto head of state.

The heartbreaking sight of a boy desperate for aid as he cries and climbs on a truck distributing aid for a local NGO near the Balukali refugee camp

Rohingya have been classed as illegal immigrants in the country and have been denied civil rights.

Their treatment has been described by the UN as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

The latest mass exodus was sparked by a brutal crackdown last summer after Rohingya militants attacked police posts, killing 12.

Amnesty International said that in response, Rohingya were subjected to a "targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning".

There are now thought to be nearly a million Rohingya refugees who have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh — and more than 1,000 are thought to have been killed.

The UK said in May 2018 it would pledge £70million in aid ahead of the monsoon season, which is part of £129m in contributions the UK has made since August 2017 and will focus on providing materials to strengthen their shelters and help with food and water as well as healthcare services.

What has Aung San Suu Kyi said about the crisis?

Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and had been hailed as the saviour of Myanmar after decades of repressive military rule.

An Oxford graduate, she was feted in the West and given dozens of awards and accolades in solidarity with her campaign for democracy while she was under house arrest for much of the time between 1989 and 2010.

But she was finally given power after the 2015 elections which saw her National League For Democracy party win 86 per cent of the parliamentary seats.

Although she was prohibited from becoming President under the constitution because of her foreign-born husband and children, the new role of State Counsellor, effectively Prime Minister, was created for her.

But despite her lifelong pro-Democracy campaigning, she failed to condemn violence against the million-strong Rohingya population.

Aung San Suu Kyi was condemned by world leaders and UN officials who accused her of turning a blind eye to the blooodshed, and there were calls for her to lose her Nobel Peace Prize.

In October 2017, Oxford City Council voted to strip her of the Freedom of the City, which she was granted in 1997.

Bob Geldof handed back his Freedom of the City of Dublin in protest against Suu Kyi, who also held the award.

He said he did not "wish to be associated in any way with an individual currently engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of north west Burma".

Why have two Reuters journalists been jailed?

The court found them guilty of violating a state secrets act while investigating violence against the Rohingya minority.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, both Myanmar citizens, were arrested while carrying official documents they had just received from police officers.

The pair maintain their innocence, claiming they have been set up by the police.

The case has been widely seen as a test of press freedom in Myanmar.

The two men, aged 32 and 28, had been collecting evidence about the murders of ten Rohingya men by the army in the village of Inn Din in northern Rakhine in September 2017.

However, they were arrested before the report's publication, shortly after being handed documents by two policemen they met at the restaurant for the first time.

A police witness testified during the trial that the restaurant meeting was a set-up to entrap the journalists.

The final report was considered an extraordinary accomplishment as it contained dozens of testimonies and confessions of crimes against the Rohingya Muslims, with accounts from paramilitary police directly implicating the military.

The Reuters findings were in direct contrast to the military's own investigation in which it exonerated itself of all crimes.

Desperate Rohingya Muslims filmed swimming through river in attempts to flee

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